Wednesday Weekly Meeting

Wednesday 16 Jul 2025, 11:00 → 12:00 Asia/Tehran

Ahmad Mashal (ILSF)

General weekly meeting of the school of particles and accelerators (hybrid format)

• Meeting Place: Seminar Room, School of Particles and Accelerators, IPM
• Link to join virtually: https://www.skyroom.online/ch/ipm-particles/weekly-seminar

11:00 → 12:00 Cosmic birefringence as a probe of the nature of dark matter

Understanding the fundamental nature of dark matter remains one of the most profound challenges in modern physics. In this talk, I will present how cosmic birefringence—the rotation of the polarization plane of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) photons—can serve as a sensitive probe of dark matter phenomenology. I will focus on theoretical frameworks in which dark matter candidates, such as sterile neutrinos, dipolar dark matter, or axion-like fields, induce parity-violating effects that manifest as measurable birefringence. These signatures offer a unique observational window into the interactions between dark matter and Standard Model particles, providing constraints that are complementary to those from conventional direct and indirect detection methods.

Speaker: Dr Somayyeh Mahmoudi (School of Particles and Accelerators - IPM)